Nutrition is a four letter word…

Nutrition is one of those subjects that people don’t want to be “told”. There’s generally too many well-meaning people telling us off about something in modern life, don’t queue here, park there, press 1 for this and 2 for that – and with more and more tech guiding our life, the restriction of what we can and can’t do can hem us in, suffocating what little free will we might have – so when we do have choices we feel like we should just break free and do what the heck we like – The Open Road, finally.

Nutrition feels like it might be the only area in life that we can express ourselves fully, and when we are working, and hemmed in by those structures we don’t want any others – no more rules, just free flow treating, we’ve deserved it after all. We aren’t really aware of “rules of food” and we certainly don’t want to know them.

What we might not realise is that structure is our freedom. Our perception of what constitutes so called healthy food might vary, but there are some foundation bits of biochemistry that apply to everyone. When you get these biochemical strategies in around food (fancy terminology but some of it good ol’ common sense) energy soars, sleep improves, mind clears, mood improves and life explodes into different colours and possibilities. What was referred to as Life/Work balance, just becomes a wonderful energised thing called Life, and we embrace it with two hands. Adopt the strategy, get the results and then you have energy to spare to do all the things that you are too knackered to do when you get home, like life. Really live.

Getting The Bases In

You need to balance energy right from the start – and this is where that fancy bit of biochemistry comes in – you do that by controlling a hormone called insulin. The very short version of how you do that is, avoid food that is sweet (so anything that tastes sweet, even if it is so called natural), fluffy (that is stuff that has a low density, think of popcorn – or fluffy like mashed potatoes), and white (think of that as processed food, like a croissant as an example).

Aim for food instead that is dense (heavy, like a lentil – although small it’s very dense), fibrous (real food), protein, and healthy fats (like nuts, olive oil, avocados, and surprise – butter! Yes, folks, butter is back!). So that is job number one, eating real food, that hasn’t been processed pretty much does that.

Job Number Two

If you are working in a job – you must invest in breakfast (timing is less important). You must never, ever have “twaddle” cereal (the commercial cereal branded products we have all grown up with). These products are just “sugar on a stick” (or bowl) They might talk a good game, but to a man they are just trying to sell you a dream when in fact it’s just a sugar nightmare.

Better choices to sustain your energy might be: Eggs on proper toast (try rye – its very dense), good smoked salmon, nice goat or sheep’s cheese, sardines – can you throw in some broccoli or sauerkraut (yuck? – But great for your innards). You might be protesting that this sounds like effort – just try it see your energy soar and realise that actually, you’d be crazy not to restructure your life to allow this little hack.

Nutrition is a Four letter word

You guessed it. T I M E. When we are pressed for time because we have busy working schedules – look at where you can just reclaim space. When it comes to food, you need to plan it, like a campaign – don’t be the one looking wearily in the fridge at the end of the day – hoping that Dobby The House Elf has been in and re-stocked it when you were out at work. A menu planner that you stick on your fridge helps – very low tech. Then you don’t over buy and throw 40 per cent of it away at the end of the week (real statistic).

One other sensational magic time machine is the recipe boxes you get delivered to your door. I use Abel and Cole (fully organic), but there are others. The delicious recipes mean that you don’t have to think what is for dinner, you follow the recipe and the end result is so perfect and sensational that you fall back in love with food, and quite possibly your partner.

Capture the Tech and wrestle it to the ground

Put the Tech down. I’m tech’ed up like the next man, but you need to put boundaries in so it doesn’t just gobble up that precious afore mentioned resource (clue – tick-tock). Cat videos are cute, but is that going to move you forward, and are you going to change you and your world? Try an App called Forest that keeps you focussed and on your tasks.

Action Plan for Action Man (or woman)

Balance your energy – eat real food

Eat Breakfast – eat real food

Magic up time and live a real Life, full of energy, enthusiasm, and dynamic happiness – All this from Food, who knew?

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My Latest Book! Positive Nutrition: How to upgrade your energy for work and life

As our lives speed up at an ever frantic pace, we can find that we just don’t have the energy currency to keep up. What if getting the focused energy we need is nothing more than understanding the rules, and then putting in a strategic eating plan to deliver concrete results? Kate Cook delivers a down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach to eating well. With so much confusion around diet, food, and eating, this book aims to get a clear eating structure in place, empowering the reader to make wise and nurturing choices around food, for both work dynamism and focused-living.